Circle of Treason Read Online Free PDF Page B

It was time to put that imparted knowledge to work. After some back and forth division management agreed to give me a chance. My new assignment was as deputy chief of external operations in Africa.
    Africa was fertile ground for Soviet and East European operations, with many field stations primarily staffed with enthusiastic and active Africa Division case officers. My first year in the branch was a baptism by fire. At times I wondered if I should have taken division leadership’s recommendation to avoid such a position. Two weeks after my arrival the branch chief announced he would be serving on a promotion panel for the next month and a half. I was on my own. Two months later he announced that he was resigning from the Agency. I was still on my own. I remained deputy chief and was named acting chief, a dubious title I held for the next year. In late 1984 Burton Gerber, then SE Division chief replacing Dave Forden, officially named me chief of SE External Operations for Africa. His approval of my work was reward enough.
    In early 1985 a friend from the past appeared. It was Poleshchuk, the first-tour KGB political intelligence officer whose operation I had participated in while on an official trip to Kathmandu in 1974. He was now in Lagos, Nigeria and had switched his specialty to counterintelligence collection and operations.
    The pace of an already busy branch became frenetic. Large numbers of immediate action cables were transmitted to and from the field on meeting locations, arrangements, and agendas; requirements; compensation issues; emergency recontact plans; and so forth. The operation proceeded smoothly until 2 October 1985. On that date I was notified by the Division front office that Poleshchuk had been arrested. He was gone.
    In January 1986 Gerber called me to his office, where I listened in stunned silence as he recounted loss after loss of the division’s Soviet assets. Poleshchuk had not been the only one. Gerber’s monologue ended with the introduction of the reason for my presence. We had a new source, and I would be part of the Gerber/Paul Redmond plan to keep him alive. Redmond was chief of the division’s Counterintelligence Group and Gerber’s co-crusader in the effort to stop the hemorrhaging. Because we did not know who or what had caused our losses, we would operate on the assumption that our problem still existed. This was the genesis of what was later dubbed the “back room,” an implementation of security procedures never previously envisioned or required in directorate history.
    For the next year I continued my duties as chief (and deputy chief) of the Africa Branch along with the new deep cover role. However, after the first two weeks of multiple assignments I was overloaded and overwhelmed. Recalling Gerber’s order that I reported only to him, I related my need and asked for the assistance of Diana Worthen, an analyst in the SE CI Group. She and I had been friends and co-workers for many years on the Polyakov and other cases. Gerber quickly agreed to the request, noting only that he first had to clear it with Clair (Clair George, the DDO at the time). No one would be given access to information on the new operation without his approval. Quickly, Worthen and I were once again a team.
    These were stressful and demanding times. Not long after the appearance of our GRU source, I was brought into another new operation involving an anonymous write-in to a CIA officer in Bonn. The volunteer, named by us Mister X, dropped a bombshell. Our Soviet sources had been compromised due to a penetration of CIA communications. In exchange for this information and the promise of more, the author demanded that we place $50,000 in a cache or dead drop in East Berlin. The two cases progressed through the summer along with my travel to West Berlin to deliver the second of three packages for Mister X.
    Seven months later in March 1987 Gerber and Redmond summarily removed me from my